our clothes could lay intertwined
by tamzinrose
Summary: A series of drabbles and oneshots about Cook/Effy, because there just aren't enough. Sometimes mentions of Freddie. May be spoilers.
1. Ruby and Lou

It's cold enough that she can see her breath. She thinks it might rain soon; it smells like rain, that odd taint in the air. She's shivering, huddled in her leather jacket on the bench overlooking the pond, watching the ducks. She wanted to bring bread to feed them, like when she was a child, but he said they didn't even have enough money to feed themselves. He promised her they wouldn't be sleeping in the car again tonight; she's not sure yet whether to believe him.

Despite his flaws, he keeps his promises. Or at least, he keeps his promises to her. He loves her. She thinks he always will. They're Cook and Effy.

"Come on, princess. Found us somewhere to sleep. Told you I would, didn't I?" He's wearing that cocky grin that says he's proud of himself. She misses that look when it goes away; she knows how hard it is for him to be proud of himself, how he is used to thinking that he's shit.

She takes a last drag on her cigarette before passing it to him. Their supplies are running low. He drops it and she grinds it under her boot. She kisses him and tastes nicotine.


	2. what if the whole world is cursed?

He doesn't always understand, but he tries. He tries harder than anyone. He fights, for her, for them, for him. He has to fight for everything, because no one ever wants to give him anything. He doesn't get given anything. Everything he has, he's fought for, and he has to fight to hold onto it.

Effy is fascinated and intimidated by his passion, his tenacity, his love.

Freddie loves her the way he thinks he's supposed to, the way he thinks she wants him to. He treats her like she's delicate, puts her on a pedestal, like she needs to be protected. He acts as if he's scared to disappoint her. His love is like a point he's trying to prove.

Cook is wild and fierce and brave and stupid. He loves her because they're the same, they're Cook and Effy, and no one else can understand that. No one else can understand her like that. He needs her, and she needs him, even if she's reluctant to admit it.

Cook's love is bruised knuckles, kiss swollen lips, scratches on his back, lovebites on her neck. It's dancing too close, drinking too much, laughing too loud. It's fucking. Cook's love makes him vulnerable; he knows she's scared of being trapped, but he's scared of being alone.

She's prone to wander, but worse, she runs away.


	3. Ruby said it might be but

Cook's so used to losing that her choice seems inevitable. He thinks _Fuck you both_. He is angry and hurt and scared. These are the two people he loves the most in the world and they are both choosing each other instead of him.

He feels rejected and frightened. He needs something to cling onto, some stability. He's had The Three Musketeers all his life. He's off balance without them.

Fuck. Effy fucked up everything, JJ was right. Effy took Freddie and broke Cook's heart.

At first, before she really fucking loses it, he almost thinks they deserve it. Fuck Freddie for thinking he could handle her, deceiving himself into thinking he _knew_ her. Fuck her for thinking Freddie could be enough for her.

But then he sees her and it's... It's so much worse than he thought. She looks wild, eyes wide, terrified.

He thinks that, maybe... He thinks it might have been different if she'd chosen him. _She_ might have been different if she'd chosen him.

He doesn't want to blame Freddie for this, but. Effy fell in love with Freddie and then she went fucking mental. She tried to fucking kill herself. And okay, sure, that's partly Katie's fault for being a twat and giving her the opportunity, but – a lot of that's gotta be on Freddie, surely?

Effy was...she may not have always been happy, or the most together of girls. In fact, she was pretty much a fucking headcase most of the time, but that was why Cook loved her. She was broken. She was like him. She made sense.

He didn't think he could fix her. He wasn't that stupid. He knew it wasn't that easy, would never be that easy. But he knew he could love her. And he thought that he could probably make her happy, at least sometimes. She was happy when they were outlaws. He'd never seen her laugh like that before, clutching at him to stay upright, and he'd never seen her smile so much.

Cook thinks that maybe, if they'd just kept going, she would have been okay. She could have stayed happy and she could have stayed safe. Everything would have been okay if they'd just kept going. That's what she needed. She needed to run. He would've let her. He would've helped her.

Except. Except he thinks of Elizabeth, the girl he met at the park, the version of her without him, without Freddie, without any of the shit that dragged Effy down.

He remembers Freddie in the days of his mother, when she was... and when she died, and then the funeral. Cook remembers the weight of the responsibility of those days, how heavy the burden of looking after Freddie was. He remembers being frightened of failure, and how uncertain he was, all the time, how he was never sure if he was doing the right thing or if he could be doing better. He felt like he needed to try harder, all the time, to do more. He can't imagine living like that.

But he would have. For her. For Effy. He would have done anything for her. He would have fought her demons, fought for her. He would have let his love for her drive him to insanity.

So he can't blame Freddie. Not really. He knows he did all he could. It wasn't his fault that it wasn't enough.


	4. since they were together

She wakes him, shaking from a nightmare. Things are coming back to her. Sometimes slowly. Sometimes too much. She tells him about a dark room and a man filled with hate. Cook winces. She says _Freddie_ and they both start to cry.

They know what happened. They don't want to. They don't want to know that. But they had to. They needed to see.

Cook snuck them in to the scene of the crime, ducking under police tape, in the middle of the night. They stared at the blood spatters and felt sick, holding hands so tightly that their nails left half moons in each other's hands. They needed to be there, where it ended.

"Close the door." Effy said, and Cook did, pulling his shirt up to cover his hand so he wouldn't leave prints.

She said she could hear him screaming in her head. He didn't respond. He couldn't. He cried and cried until he couldn't breathe. Effy shoved him backwards out of the room, trying to ignore the way he was gasping. "Run." She said, and they did, and they didn't stop until they couldn't see the house anymore.

When they stopped, he threw up and once he'd caught his breath and looked round, he saw that she was holding her hair back and hunched over too, vomiting. They were still holding hands. They were afraid to let go.

They share a bed. It's not about sex. They're grieving, mourning their loss, their love.

Effy has a new therapist, a female doctor. Anthea met her first, spent hours and hours researching her methods and credentials, then hours and hours talking to her. They all feel guilty.

She takes Cook with her, when she has appointments. She holds his hand the whole time. He doesn't speak, but he doesn't need to. He's there so she doesn't have to be alone. As long as he's with her, he doesn't have to be alone either.


	5. she knew they weren't

One morning, she looks at him and smiles. He smiles back. For the first time since he found out what happened, he doesn't feel guilty for smiling.

Later, they have that listless Sunday feeling. They sprawl on the sofa, her back against his chest, his arm a warm weight across her waist. They are still Cook and Effy.


	6. They thought they were finally free

When he's James and she's Elizabeth, he feels like everything could be okay.


	7. We all miss you

**A/N: Not entirely sure why everything I post lately keeps repeating itself. Sorry about that.**

Sometimes he thinks the aftermath will never end.

It was bad enough believing Freddie had run away. But then there was a notebook with a warning, leading to a blood spattered basement, with a body and a funeral.

For a while, there was too much to think about and to do much to do. He could avoid thinking about it, dwelling on it. He had to look after Effy and Karen and JJ. He couldn't fall apart because they needed him not to.

But at night, when everyone else is sleeping, there's nothing left to distract him. He sees Freddie. Not as he was at the funeral, once they'd cleaned him up and made it...not okay, it would never be okay, but better. He sees Freddie in the basement, with the blood, and he shakes and he cries because he didn't help him.

When he does sleep, fleeting and fitful, Freddie fills his dreams. His face, mostly his eyes. He never smiles. Cook misses his smile.


	8. Two broken hearts together

Effy takes a black Sharpie to the blank canvas of her walls.

_De-construction is best realised through reconstruction_**: **_taking apart to put back together differently._

**Freddie Freddie Freddie Freddie Freddie Freddie Freddie**

She scrawls snatches of poetry, song lyrics, quotes from books.

_Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be._

**There is no why.**

_I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over._

**EVERYBODY LOVES ME**

When her mum comes in, she's stopped writing, staring at the wall as if it's something entirely unrelated to her, even though she's still holding the uncapped pen. Her mother gently takes it from her and writes **You are _Effy Stonem_** in big block letters.

"I'm so sorry sweetheart." She says, stroking her daughter's hair back from her face.

Effy stares at her, the flicker of a question in her eyes and the slight arch of her eyebrow.

"I shouldn't have put all of your things away. I shouldn't have tried to make you into someone else, someone you're not. You are Effy Stonem and I love you, for who you are."

"Even if I'm crazy?"

Anthea smiles, a little sadly. "Especially if you're crazy."

Effy notices the ink on her hands and wanders through to the bathroom to wash it off. When she gets back to her room, Cook's there too, standing with her mother, both of them brandishing Sharpie pens. Cook's attempting to draw Pato the Funny Giraffe, and her mum's laughing. She hasn't seen her mum laugh like that in a long time.

She knows her mum feels guilty, for everything that happened. For not being there when it happened, for being a shit mum, for not knowing what was really going on with Doctor Foster, because she should have _known_ and she should have protected her daughter. But Effy knows she's not responsible for that, for Freddie. Neither of them are. There's so much to hold onto that she can't keep that too.

They both realise she's there at the same moment, Cook cautiously lowering the pen while her mum stops laughing. Her mum is looking over at her with an awkward apologetic expression, and she doesn't want to be responsible for that either. Effy moves closer, so she can see Cook's version of Pato the Funny Giraffe more clearly, and she can practically feel the weight of their eyes on her.

"Hardly Picasso."

Cook chuckles and the tension eases, and she starts giggling too, but her mum's just watching them, still worried.

"Made you laugh though, didn't it?" He's not trying to be an artist; he's just trying to make her happy.

Effy thinks Cook would spend the rest of his life trying to make her happy. And maybe it's not ideal, but to her it feels like love. They may not be three losers fucking each other anymore, and maybe they're both still too fucked up about Freddie, because they both loved him, so much, but they are Cook and Effy. They are _still_ Cook and Effy. He is Cook and she will be Effy and if nothing else, that's a foundation. That's something to work from, somewhere to start.

Something to hold on to and remember. While Cook leans in to finish his drawing, she takes the other pen from her mother to write **We are Cook and Effy**, underneath where her mum wrote her name.

Cook grins when he reads it and he loops his arm around her shoulders, kisses her on the cheek. It's tender, affectionate, and she's not used to it from Cook, but they're happy and that's okay. It's okay to be happy. One day she thinks she'll believe that.


	9. Immobile from panic

Effy is curled up, cowering, under the bed. Her house is full of strangers and noise. She thought it'd help. She'd needed a distraction from the ache, the abject misery of abandonment.

Freddie didn't text back. Her addled mind perceives this as rejection. She's hurt and scared and she isn't sure she can survive this. Her love was an aberration that made her weak. She can't keep everything out, or rather, keep everything in anymore. She has all these feelings and she can't block them out anymore. He's made her weak. Freddie has broken her. Maybe not her heart, not yet, but he will.


	10. There's an unsettling here

After Freddie's dead and buried, he's still _there_. He's still with them. There's still the Three Musketeers, two boys forced to be too grown up, and the third who'll stay young forever. And they're still three losers fucking each other.

Effy doesn't stop loving Freddie just because he's dead. Cook doesn't expect her to or want her to. Cook knows she still loves him and he still loves her and everything else can wait, because she loves Freddie. She's in love with Freddie.

He thinks maybe he was in love with Freddie too. Sort of. Not in the conventional way, the gay way, like Emily and Naomi, with the desire to fuck each other and all of that romantic shit. Freddie was more than a mate, a best friend, a brother, an ally, an alibi. He was home, he was safety, he was stability, he was love, he was trust. Freddie was fucking _everything_.

Cook's kinda fucked without him. It's like...like losing an arm. Like he's got no centre of gravity or sense of balance, nothing to rely on or anchor him anymore. Like being told, suddenly, that actually the sky is pink and he's a French duke and everyone's been fucking lying to him his whole fucking miserable life.

There's no Freddie, except there is, and there's a headstone and a grave with fresh flowers and neatly rolled joints. And there's a crazy girl who loves him, and a criminal fucking loser who loves her.

But maybe... Freddie couldn't protect her. He couldn't help her or stop any of this shit from happening. He couldn't keep her together, safe, _happy_ and she was _in love_ with him. So what, exactly, does Cook think he's going to do? What makes him different, capable? He's never been capable of anything other than causing trouble and fucking up.

But this matters. This girl. This girl that he loves, that his best friend loves. This girl that he knew _meant_ something, from the first time he saw her. This girl will always mean something and she will always matter, to him, to _them_. Freddie might not be able to say it anymore or do anything about it, but that just means that Cook's going to have to fight even fucking harder, for both of them, for _Freddie_, for all of them, the three losers fucking each other for the rest of their lives.

So Cook is going to _try_ and he is going to fucking _fight_. He will not let them down. He will not disappoint. He's going to get them through this. He's going to look after Effy, forever, and he hopes, he swears, that one day she'll be happy.


	11. and I don't know what to do

Effy and Freddie hold hands the whole journey back. She even falls asleep with her head on his shoulder.

Cook tries to be okay with it, but it's really not okay. Freddie did save him from having his face melted off, so he tries to ignore it, focus on the fact that JJ's driving a stolen boat and how fucking good it felt to push his dad into the river.

When he tells the story to Naomi later, she tells him that standing up to his dad was a classic reassertion of self moment for the tragic hero. He gazes at her blankly.

"You know, like, "_Tis I, Hamlet the Dane_" or "_I am John Proctor_"." She sighs, rolls her eyes. "Most of the times when Doctor Who says "_Because I'm the Doctor_" before he defeats the bad guys."

He grins. "Ah, yeah, I get ya!"

"Read the fucking set texts, Cook."

He laughs and raises his beer can to her in salute. "Nice one Naomi."

"What are you going to do?"

He shakes the half empty beer can at her, as if it's obvious.

She rolls her eyes again. She rolls her eyes a lot around Cook. "I don't mean right now, you twat. I mean, what are you going to do about Effy?"

Cook's face falls, the cheeky grin gone in an instant. He shrugs. "We can't all walk off into a fucking sunset holding hands, can we?"

They're not all Naomi and Emily. He's James fucking Cook and he's _shit_. He's fucking dreaming if he thinks he's gonna get a happy ever after. His friends are happy and good for them, but it's just rubbing his nose in something he'll never have, something he doesn't deserve. He'll always be outside looking in at love and that's shit but it's him.

"So you're just gonna give up? That doesn't seem like the Cook I know and tolerate."

He sticks his middle finger up at her, scowling. "She picked him! I can't fucking help that."

"Well...maybe not. You can wait and hope he fucks up and breaks her heart like she's so scared he will."

He snorts, scoffs, isn't pleased. "Or?"

Naomi sighs. "Or you admit defeat and try very hard to move on."

"No, but...she's _Effy_." He says, like that explains everything, and honestly it does.

"Do you want her to be happy Cook?"

He wants to punch Freddie in the fucking face and he wants to cry because it _hurts_ and he wants to be very, _very_ drunk, right now, because this is not a conversation to be having sober, if ever. Instead, he just shuts his eyes, tightly, and nods.

Naomi shifts closer, leans into him. "I'm sorry Cook." She murmurs and kisses him on the cheek.

"She deserves him. She deserves better than me. Fuck. _Fuck_."

Even though he believes what he's saying, it's still fucking horrible. It doesn't stop him loving her, wanting to be with her. It doesn't stop it _hurting_. He doesn't know how he's going to get used to seeing them together, how he's going to cope with it and be okay with it and make it stop fucking hurting. He wants to be happy for her, and he wants to be able to tell Freddie that it's okay, that he understands.

"Why do I always have to be a fucking loser?"


	12. but still I recall with faintness

"I still... I still talk to him sometimes." She says it like she's expecting him to react badly, as if he'll call an ambulance or hit her or something.

He doesn't. He nods. "Me too. Sometimes."

Effy wants to ask what Cook talks about, what he tells Freddie, the things he wants him to know. But she worries that it's too personal and Cook will get upset, or, worse, that he'll want to know what _she_ talks to Freddie about.

It all feels so precarious, a cautious balancing act. Sometimes, most of the time, it feels like walking on eggshells, like picking her way through a minefield; she doesn't know what's going to set Cook off, how he'll respond, how _she'll_ respond. Her own reactions take her by surprise. She can _feel_ how careful Cook's being, his unwavering devotion, the intensity of his concern. They're caught up in their own emotions, their own grieving mourning, but it's intricately intertwined with each other's.

Her own guilt feels heavy, relentless, but she's so keenly aware of Cook's regrets and self recriminations that she wants to hide it from him, keep him from the burden. His emotional baggage is hefty enough without adding the bulk of hers to it too.

But that's the problem. They're Cook and Effy; their feelings are complex counterparts. They blame themselves for each other's suffering, for Freddie, for the whole fucked up thing. They're trying so hard to disguise the way they feel. Effy worries that if Cook knew some of the things she feels or thinks or believes, it would destroy him. Cook's trying _so hard_ to protect Effy. She doesn't want to make him feel worse by knowing the way she feels, the shit that's in her head and her nightmares and the fucking _guilt_.

It's pervasive. It's complicated, layered. There's the obvious and understandable, like her sense of responsibility for what happened with John Foster, but there's also the more subtle, the type of shit that sneaks up on her, like the date or the weather or a song on the radio that Freddie will never get to hear, all the little things. And sometimes she forgets for a moment and she smiles or she laughs, and then she wonders if it's normal to resent herself for being happy, however briefly.

Sometimes she thinks of things she wants to tell him, starts tapping out a text message or scrolling through her phone to get to his number. She didn't realise how reliant on him she'd become until he wasn't there anymore. She didn't understand how much of her life he'd invaded until he was dead.

Everything reminds her of him. It's not just songs on the radio or shitty new TV shows he would have spent hours mocking. It's her. He's in her head and she talks to him. Not all the time. It's not like how it was, when she was really crazy, with the voices and the demons. He doesn't talk back. Sometimes she can see him, in her head, but it's hazy, and he doesn't look quite right, like she's remembered the quirk of his eyebrow wrong or the exact colour of his eyes.

Sometimes she wants to remember everything exactly as it was, to cling to it, forever, and never forget or let it fade. She worries about forgetting his face, the sound of his voice or his laugh, his smile or the way he shook his head when he was disapproving. She even wants to keep the bad parts. She feels like that old woman in the wedding dress with the clocks all stopped, like if she just stays here, surrounds herself with his stuff, with the memories, with _him_, and keeps the outside world away, then...

"I'm never going to forget him, _ever_, and I don't want to, but... I don't think I want to live like this forever either. Would he mind? If we...if _I _was happy?"

Cook finds himself thinking of his dad's boat, of Freddie asking him to be all right with Effy choosing to be without him. Effy didn't choose this, but she's got to suffer through it anyway. "No, princess."


End file.
